Stowe provides further details about her story based on actual events in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Chapter 13:
The character of Simeon Halliday was made to reflect the sentiment of Americans who felt it was their religious duty to help free those who had escaped. Stowe had correspondence with Quakers who were tried and found guilty for crimes such as harboring fugitives. In A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe includes a letter she received from John Garret, a man put on trial for assisting an enslaved mother and her children.
The full story of this connection can be read in Part I, Chapter XIII “The Quakers” of A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Uncle Tom's Cabin in the National Era 
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